A. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to the field of telecommunications, and more particularly to casual collaborative conferencing.
B. Description of the Related Art
The World Wide Web (WWW), one type of service provided through the Internet, allows a user to access a universe of information which combines text, audio, graphics and animation within a hypermedia document. Links are contained within a WWW document which allow simple and rapid access to related documents. The WWW was developed to provide researchers with a system that would enable them to quickly access all types of information with a common interface, removing the necessity to execute a variety of numerous steps to access the information. During 1991, the WWW was released for general usage with access to hypertext and UseNet news articles. Interfaces to WAIS, anonymous FTP, Telnet and Gopher were added. By the end of 1993, WWW browsers with easy to use interfaces had been developed for many different computer systems.
UseNet is a network of news groups on thousands of different topics which allow the on-line discussion through the posting of individual messages (articles) which can be read by participants. An article is similar to an e-mail message, having a header, message body and signature.
Internet Relay Chat (IRC) is an example of a program that facilitates Web chat. “Chatting” is the term used for the network equivalent of the old telephone party line. IRC is accessed through an Internet connection. This technology permits the user to chat with users from all over the world about hundreds of different subjects at any time. In a way, it is as if the UseNet newsgroups were a live discussion group rather than postings.
The word “chat” may be somewhat misleading, because persons participating in a chat session are not necessarily speaking, but they are typing and reading text messages that chat participants write. Moreover, if the information communicated is not only in text form, but is real-time audio and video, chat rooms are better described by the term virtual space rooms. Once a person enters a chat room, which is really just a web page, that person can choose to only read the exchanges, known as lurking, or the person can join in and post messages.
Many chat rooms focus the conversation on specific topics, such as health, politics, and football. In that way, people with similar interests can find one another.
The first step for a person interested in joining a chat session, is to locate a chat room that interests the person. Once the person is on the web site (leading to the chat room), the interested person will usually be asked to register. For privacy purposes, people do not register using their real name, but instead people make up a name.
Once the person is equipped with a registration name, the person clicks a button and follows the instructions on the web site to choose a chat room, depending on the interests of the person. Joining a chat room is like walking into a room full of people talking to each other, sometimes with several conversations going on at once. Once inside the chat room, the person will probably find himself or herself in the middle of a conversation. There is no need to jump into the conversation. It is not uncommon for chat rooms to have many more lurkers than participants. As the interaction continues, new postings appear on the computer screen. When the person decides to join the conversation, all it takes is to type a message in a blank box in the screen and click a Talk button (or hit the Enter or Return key on the keyboard). Soon the message will be posted in the chat room and people may respond. In addition to chatting on a chat room where the text is broadcast to everyone on that chat room, there are ways to enter into a private chat.
A number of Internet phone software products offer voice capabilities in real time over the Internet. Internet phoneware vendors typically provide their own directory servers, organized by topic as well as by name. Voice quality varies from moment to moment. Such variations are due to the processing delay that results from encoding and decoding the conversation as well as the inherent delay of the Internet, which varies according to the amount of traffic at any given time and the route through which the signal must travel.
The Web chat is, however, only one level of an area of technology known as collaborative conferencing. Collaborative conferencing is the ability for two or more individuals to work together in real-time, in a coordinated manner over time and space by using computers. Collaborative conferencing is not limited to a live text exchange, but includes data conferencing/shared whiteboard applications, group interactive document editing, and audio and video multi-point conferencing among others.
The technique of Internet chat has the disadvantage that it is limited in the choices that individuals can make respecting whom they want to establish communication with. Namely, they have to join a chat room that has a specific discussion topic, and can only pick people in that chat room with whom to engage in a private chat. To solve this problem, a solution has been proposed and implemented, in which matches between different individuals connected to the WWW are created. This requires the inconvenient step of requesting information to the user, so as to create a user profile, and thus, perform matches based on those profiles.
Therefore, there is a need in the art for a system that offers more flexibility to individuals to choose other individuals with whom they want to engage in a conversation, the conversation not being limited to a conventional Internet chat (text).